Mr. Danford is an engineer who worked in corporate development and mergers and acquisitions at Cisco Systems Inc. in the late 1990s and later co-invented a patent granted to Mobile Iron Inc. for mobile device management. He said networking has entered “a renaissance period.”

Next-generation networking technology is moving from specialized Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) to x86-based hardware, where Intel dominates the market, and “there’s a real hunger and enthusiasm inside the company,” he said.

“We will look back and say this is one of those times when things changed,” Mr. Danford said.

Mr. Danford joined Lightspeed as a venture partner in 2013 from Storm Ventures, where he’d been a managing director. He had worked at Cisco with Lightspeed Founder Barry Eggers and was hired to incubate startups specializing in enterprise and mobile technology, according to a press release the firm issued at the time.

Mr. Danford said Thursday the position was intended to last for about 18 to 24 months. He helped Lightspeed with some investing and worked on a couple of incubations, he said.

Mr. Danford called Lightspeed “one of the top enterprise tech investors on Sand Hill Road.” But he said no venture firm can match the resources of Intel Capital, which includes a team dedicated to helping Intel’s portfolio companies with business development, both inside and outside of Intel. He will be an investment director with Intel, focused on networking.

“Intel’s deal flow is equal and sometimes greater than the large venture capital firms, and the amount of capital invested is equal and sometimes greater, and the amount of resources made available to startups is definitely greater,” said Mr. Danford, who called those resources “a real advantage” when it comes to investing.

Lightspeed raised its largest fund to date—a 10thfund of about $950 million—earlier this year. The firm recently added two new partners: Principal Partner Nakul Mandan, who joined from Battery Ventures, and Partner Will Kohler, who joined from Summerhill Venture Partners. Both are focused on enterprise software and IT.

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